Interest in young online video viewers often obscures any discussion of older streamers. That is a mistake as boomers use online video 60% as much as younger people. AT&T lost another 600K pay TV subscribers in Q1. Higher vMVPD prices don’t seem to have changed the trend away from pay TV.

Nielsen data shows that boomers use online video about 60% as much as millennials. YouTube is a favorite video source for all age groups. New Google data shows what boomers are doing on the social video site.

Chapter 2: Boomers still watch a lot of TV (8:00)

Older Americans still watch twice as much regular TV as 18-34-year-olds. However, advertising to them in the digital domain could be a better strategy as the targeting of individual viewers comes built into the platform.

Chapter 3: Connected TV usage (11:20)

Time spent watching is far higher through a connected TV than the smartphone and tablet. Both Boomers and 18-34s are spending a significant amount of time with the platform every day.

Chapter 4: AT&T Q1 2019 video results are not pretty (13:30)

AT&T announced Q1 2019 results. The company lost 544,000 traditional pay TV subscribers and also lost 84,000 more DirecTV Now customers.

Chapter 5: Are increasing vMVPD costs slowing cord-cutting? (17:40)

DirectTV Now and all the other major vMVPD providers have recently increased the price of their subscriptions significantly. I thought this might slow cord-cutting as people hesitate to leave satellite if vMVPDs are getting more expensive. The price increases don’t seem to have impacted cord-cutting at all.

BTW In some of this discussion, I should probably have been saying “cord-shifting,” not cord-cutting. Moving from a cable, satellite, or telcoTV provider to broadband is shifting how pay TV is obtained, not eliminating it. However, there is plenty of evidence that many people leave traditional pay TV and do not sign up for a vMVPD. I estimate there are 8M vMVPD subscribers. However, traditional operators have lost 11M subscribers since 2014. Add to that; the US has added another 6 million homes since 2014. So, pay TV is missing at least 14M subscribers it ordinarily would have had absent cord-cutting.